I’m wondering what goes through the mind of a caterpillar as it turns to mush in the chrysalis. No longer a caterpillar, not yet a butterfly. I don’t mean to overwork a cliché, but the metaphor is apt as I sit on the cusp of my 61st year and my second life this time around.
From the outside my days appear to continue as before, but on the inside I have surely entered a state even I don’t recognize. The contrast in experience between my previous six decades and this moment is striking as my mind continues to surrender what it cannot grasp. We have been talking about transforming for so long that it’s easy to forget we’re actually doing so. Perhaps the difference between us and a caterpillar is that we can observe our own process, although I’m wondering if perhaps our emergence doesn’t come until we stop doing so.
Dissolve, Re-group, Re-birth. That is our cycle, and we now engage the process on a large scale as well as individually. We are changing not only our personal structures but also the very fabric in which we perceive our existence. The fabric is the web, the matrix within which we hold all thought, form and experience. It is the field of consciousness that informs our lives and determines how energy flows. The New Matrix is the one we awaken into when we emerge transformed after the dissolution of Duality and the reordering of the cells.
Some spiritual systems teach of the necessity of leaving a material experience to be liberated, claiming our true nature is spirit. Other teachings offer a similar theme of finding our home in heaven after a life of sacrifice and suffering. At the same time, we are taught that the universe has a dual nature – that somewhere out there is a God that decides our experiences. Observe, however, that virtually all of our spiritual teachings have arisen from within the matrix of consciousness we named Duality. It is the defining qualities of the Duality field to split awareness and polarize the energies, so from within that system we may deduce that this is the way of the universe. If perceptions of reality are influenced by the matrix in which we are immersed, then from within Duality we determine that we must move beyond a material existence to experience a non-dual state. But, what if that is not so?
Perhaps a big challenge of this transformation process is releasing old structures that limit experiences of transition. Minds struggle in these times because they became convinced of the superiority of their well-reasoned beliefs, ignoring input they cannot process. If all experience must pass through the mind to be valid, then a large percentage of experience is ignored. So much for feelings, intuition, psychic awareness, emotions or any other level of direct communication. Minds like data, and most everything else does not compute. This realization presents a choice of either relaxing the mind or further closing it. Each choice has consequence, which seems appropriate given the concept of free will.
With the dissolution of Duality comes the release of almost all things born of that reality. Most every crisis and breakdown observed today can be seen as energy exiting from institutions, governments, systems, religions, beliefs, and all structures within consciousness that were built upon the framework of the old story. In contrast, a New Matrix is present with the promise of different structures and experiences. The New Matrix is non-dual. Energies don’t polarize, fear is not real, and Wholeness is a defining quality of the experience. And, you don’t have to physically die to transition, although there is certainly a death to an old reality.
The mind holds the key to making the transition. The catch is that the mind has to release its hold on what it perceives is real and relax into the flow of a process much larger than itself. Information and analysis may take you to the threshold of the new earth experience, but knowledge does not open the door.
At this point there may be a crisis of mind, a choice to surrender to the bigger story in motion and an opportunity to voluntarily enter the chrysalis. My mind is definitely going to goo. I don’t know how it will re-form, but I can feel plenty of activity behind the scenes. I anticipate my own emergence out the other side, and I definitely look forward to watching all of us bursting out of our old shells, creating a whole new living experience of who we are.
